Talk:No such thing as a free lunch

Some cites

• "Rick Hauptmann located on this Yale website an article about quotations that includes this comment: 'Mr. Shapiro's research unearthed a 1952 mention in the journal Ethics, which referred to Professor Alvin Hansen's "famous TINSTAAFL formula - `There is no such thing as a free lunch.'"' Jeff Prucher located this cite and submitted it. We would like to know if the phrase can be further antedated in Hansen's own writings.

Jerry Pournelle has said that he and his father[Edward Pournelle?] both used the phrase as early as the 1930's. His father was a radio personality and made up a number of slogans and jingles, but Pournelle does not know whether his father made up the phrase or not." [1]

• "TANSTAAFL was my father's, transmitted from me to Robert Heinlein and used by him, as acknowledged in letters both to me and to reviewers." [2]

• "Despite the claims of rabid science fiction fans, this bit of folk wisdom has been with us since the late 1940s. And the term free lunch is even older. The term free lunch first appeared in print on 23 November 1854, in Wide West published in San Francisco. It is a reference to the practice of saloons giving free meals to attract clientele. Of course the savings is illusory as the price of the drinks subsidizes the food. The exact phrase, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, is also first used in the city by the bay in the 1 June 1949 edition of the San Francisco News (although this is claimed to be a reprint of a 1938 editorial so it may be even older, but the original has not been found). The science fiction fans come into the picture in 1966 with the publication of Robert Heinlein's novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. He did much to popularize the phrase, but as we have seen did not coin it. Some claim that he coined the acronym TANSTAAFL. But alas for those science fiction fans, even this is not true. TANSTAAFL is found as far back as October 1949, only a few months after the earliest appearance of the phrase."

Shapiro, a linguistic cyber-sleuth, historical lexicographer, lecturer in legal research at Yale University, and editor of the forthcoming Yale Dictionary of Quotations figured out that a 1952 article in the journal Ethics about nationalizing industries, attributes the saying to "Professor Alvin Hansen in his famous TINSTAAFL formula - 'There is no such thing as a free lunch.'" (Professor Hansen was a prominent economist and professor at Harvard University.)" [3]

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Wwoods (talk • contribs) 18:59, 20 July 2005 UTC

• My understanding of the orgin of the statement There is no free lunch is as follows. Before emmigrating to the US in the 1800's, europeans heard stories of how wine flowed freely in the streets, there was free lunch for everyone, and so on. After landing in the states and being here for a while, a kindly old man was asked what he thought of America - the reply came back: There is no free lunch. This was published, and the rest is history. PS. I was born in 1949 and probably heard the story related on TV sometime in the 1950's. I'm astonished that this explanation isn't present here. j.miller. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.102.28.226 (talk) 03:14, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

  A quick note on Jerry Pournelle – this seems to be from a 2012 blog post by him: I remember from before I was five years old my father telling me that There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. (I know it was before I was five, because I said it to Sister Mary Elizabeth in first grade, and was informed that ain’t ain’t a word we use. Before he was 5 would mean before 7 August 1938, so it seems more likely that his father read Walter Morrow's "Economics in Eight Words", which was printed in several newspapers in June 1938. --Yodin^T 02:36, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 14 July 2023

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Moved to No such thing as a free lunch. Consensus is clear. BD2412 T 01:59, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch → there is no such thing as a free lunch – The version with "ain't" may be the original saying, but the version with "is" is the most commonly used nowadays. Marsbar8 (talk) 01:42, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

• Simplify further to No such thing as a free lunch or No free lunch. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 06:52, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
• Simplify per BarrelProof. O.N.R. ^(talk) 14:21, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
• Simplify to No such thing as a free lunch per BarrelProof. Sal2100 (talk) 15:33, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
• Simplify proposal makes sense. "No such thing as a free lunch" is certainly better. However, the article seems to makes a fetish out of an obscure acronym - certainly one that I've never seen or heard of. It may need to be adjusted. Walrasiad (talk) 22:58, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
• Comment: I just found a record of a prior similar RM discussion at Talk:There ain't no such thing as a free lunch/Archive 1#Requested move, closed 5 April 2014 as no consensus. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 00:10, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
• Simplify to No free lunch per WP:CONCISE. Even with three words, it's immediately recognizable. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 19:16, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
• Simplify - NSTAAFL Red Slash 21:25, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. TANSTAAFL is the commonest acronym. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:08, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
• Simplify to No such thing as a free lunch per the comments above. This article is not titled with an acronym, so what the most common acronym is, is irrelevant. I am not familiar with any acronym being used. Marsbar8 (talk) 00:22, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
• Simplify per BarrelProof. ╠╣uw [talk] 18:15, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Other potential early uses

Searching Google Books for the phrases "thing as a free lunch" and "thing as free lunch" from before 1943 gives several examples. Many of these probably have incorrect date metadata, but there are some that are worth checking:

• Early reprint of "Economics in Eight Words" in Public Service magazine, Volumes 62–65 dated 1937 – this seems to be in vol 64 or 65 (1938), as it doesn't appear in 62 or 63 (1937). Two scans from HathiTrust both confirm it to be on p.220 of one of these volumes, but both are search only. Searches for "Economics in Eight Words" and "New York World Telegram" confirm that this is a reprint.
  • However, first publication is probably in the New York World-Telegram (the main(?) Scripps-Howard paper; likely published around the same time as the others or a bit before, in June 1938) [4]
• "there is no such thing as a free lunch" dated 1940 in Florists Exchange and Horticultural Trade World, Volume 95 [5] – really does seem to be from 1940; if confirmed it would make this the oldest use of the phrase, apart from "Economics in Eight Words"
• A quote from a 1941/1942 speech: "Economics is the social science that tells you there is no such thing as a free lunch." (this would be especially good as it probably gives the name of the speaker) [6] actually from The Welfare State (1950) [7]
• Two "no such thing as a free lunch" quotes dated 1940 in The United States News, Volume 8 [8] Says 1974 on the opposite column
• "no such thing as a free lunch", calling it "Crane's Law" (earliest known use of this name if confirmed), dated 1936 in The Municipality [9] The same quote "Crane's law was all one needed to" returns several results from around 1970, which seems more likely

All of these are snippet-view for me, but some might be accessible in the U.S. or elsewhere. --Yodin^T 21:43, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Also a good blog post that mentions a lot of the early uses (but still doesn't seem to have found the New York World-Telegram article): https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/08/27/free-lunch/ --Yodin^T 17:08, 24 August 2024 (UTC)